The School

Short story#1

I have a question for you: did you ever forger a special day—like best
friend’s birthday—because of that day was an important day for another person?
Well, that never happened to me before, but of course, life is complicated. No one
knows what’s going to happen. It might happen to me someday, but that’s not
what I want to talk about today.
March 13th was Fern’s birthday. And also Luka’s birthday.
Cloud was confused, troubled, angry, and grumpy or any word you can
think of that means ‘feeling bad for yourself.’ Shai, one of his friends, was
standing in front of him right now with angry, grumpy, troubled, (put any
word in the blank) face.
“You totally forgot, didn’t you?” Shai said, her chocolate-brown eyes
blazing with fire. She stared at the present Cloud was holding. Only one present
for Fern.

This School was for special people. Special as in biologically special. All
the students in the School was half-human, half-animal. There were four classes:
Air Class, Wind Class, Water Class and Night Class. Air Class was usually filled
with half-human and half-cat. Wind Class was usually filled with half-human,
half-rabbit. Water Class’, as you can guess, students were usually half-human,
half-fish. Lastly, all the half-human, half-owls went to Night Class.
Usually. Of course, there was some exception.
For example, if your name was Cloud, and if you were being lectured by
Shai right now, you’d be in Wind Class but half-human, half-cat. May be if your
name was Jay and your teacher’s name was Luka, then you were in Air Class even
though your mother was from Air Class and your father was from Wind Class.
Very complicated stuff.

While Shai gave him a solution to his problem, Jay was wrapping his
present for his teacher/his second-cousin-once-removed. “Ah,” he said
emotionlessly as his bow got tangled up.
“Hey, Fang, you can have this.” He tossed the bunch of bows to his and
Luka’s cat, Fang. Fang was a pretty smart, black tom with green eyes. Because
almost Air Class students were half-cats, they understood Fang and could talk to
Fang. Of course, being third-cat, third-rabbit didn’t change anything. Jay was still
part cat.
Fang mewed; You still treat me like a kit. His voice was grumpy, but there
was a strong emotion of joy coming out from his heart. Of course, Jay could feel
it.

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 Ah, one thing I forgot to mention. Jay can read minds and feel emotions of
others.
“I need to hurry up,” he groaned half to Fang, half to himself. “If Luka
finds out about this present, Shai is going to kill me.”

While Jay was talking about Shai, Shai was scolding Cloud. They were in
the lab with a sowing box. She was telling how irresponsible Cloud can be, how
he could just forget this important day, blah blah blah. It was a long time ago that
Cloud blocked the chatter from Shai and concentrated on sowing.
Shai stopped talking for a minute and stared at the stuff Cloud was making.
She narrowed her eyes, but of course, Cloud didn’t see it.
“Ah…” her eyes widened and she smacked Cloud’s head. His long, silky,
black hair was now messed up.
After he recovered from the shock, his blue eyes started to turn deadly icy.
“What the—”
Shai was one of the types who didn’t get scared of grumpy, icy people. She
cut Cloud’s sentence and started chattering. “Oh my god, you never sowed before,
have you? Look at it; it looks like a dead bunny rather than a teddy bear!”
Cloud looked at the teddy bear he made and glanced at her. “It looks fine
to me.”
“Idiot! Luka has tons of pretties, remember? She doesn’t need an old, ugly,
grandpa!”
Cloud rolled his eyes. They were sisters, for God’s sake! How could they
be so different? Their outlook was different enough—Luka had light-sand-tone
brown hair with amber eyes, which was sooo different from Shai’s ginger hair or
her shinny green eyes.
Shai groaned. “Oh my god, I don’t even know how Bree or Luka keep with
you!”
Cloud narrowed his eyes, his navy eyes filled with blue fire. Bree was
Shai’s boyfriend—or so they say. It seemed like Shai and Bree were picking on
each other all the time. It was like they were good friends who bugged each other
all the time.
Oh, and Bree was one of few friends of his. He went on a quest with him
before (This is a long story). He was strong human—oh oops, half-cat, half-human
—who was Vice-President of Air Class. He was one of best fighter of Air Class
except some people in Air Class doubt his loyalty because he had siblings in
almost every Classes—Haaken of Water Class, Tyler and Tanya of Night Class.

Leafiá was tired of looking for her sister. Her Classmates said they saw
Shai with Cloud. Why the heck would Shai be talking to him? She meant, Shai
didn’t even like him. Whenever Shai saw her talking to her, well, friend Cloud,
she would swiftly switch into this grumpy mode.

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 She knocked on the door of computer lab. There was 0.0001% of chance
that Shai was in here. There was 0.0000000001% of chance that Shai was in here
with Cloud.
There was brief silence. It was silence of listening—like when someone is
quiet to check if someone was outside of the door or if someone was following
you or well, you get the idea.
Then she heard the voice she was least expecting. “Who is this?” a voice
familiar to hers—higher than average woman’s voice, ringing tone, clear etc, etc.
That’s what other people told them.
“Um, it’s Leafiá, I mean, erg, Luka,” she said with annoyed voice. Shai
was in here all along! And she checked every other place except here!
Okay, with the Luka thing, Shai hated her name Leafiá. Partly because
people used to bug her and she was an overprotective little sister, partly because
she didn’t like long names. Apparently, Leafiá was a long name for her.
She sighed, “Shai, can I come in? Is Cloud there? I need to speak with
him.”
She could feel Shai hesitate. They were weird this way—they could feel
where they were briefly, what they were feeling, if they were lying or not. But you
could also cover this ability if one of them didn’t want other sister to figure out
where she was. That was one of reasons why she couldn’t find Shai right away.
“Um, well, Cloud is here with me right now, but you can’t come here right
now,” Shai said guilty. This made Luka’s heart skip faster.
What were they doing in that room? She didn’t want to think.
Luka said a little loudly, “Cloud? You there?”
She knew Cloud wasn’t a conversational, but he always answered when she
called his name. At least, he used to.
“Hi, Leaf,” his calm, breeze-like voice washed over her, like wave gently
brushing her toes.
Will you please tell me what you’re doing there? She asked. Oh forgot to
mention—she and Cloud could talk in minds. Just them, like, in private. It seemed
like she had a lot of this special magic thing going on, but really, it was nothing.
Her second-cousin-once-removed, Jay, could do thing way cooler.
He sighed in mind. If I say anything about this, Shai will murder me, not
that I’m scared of her. He quickly added.
Her anger cracked. This was enough. Cloud was always like that; telling
her that she was the prettiest, and that he loved her best, but he would tell same
thing to Fern, his cousin. Oh, and one thing I should mention because Luka
wouldn’t able to bear this: Fern was her best friend. Of course, she couldn’t even
imagine her being with Cloud, when she was in different Class and also when she
was a Medicine Doctor.
Leaf was a gentle half-cat half-human, partly because she was a Medicine
Doctor. Some kits were very hard to deal with, but I never saw Leaf screaming at a

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single kit. She always treated them like treasures, while Jay tried to follow her
example, because Leaf was going to scold him otherwise. Duh.
But even her patient wasn’t enough for this. Oh my god, a jerk, stupid,
idiot, meanie, sick-pig! She thought all the bad words that would describe Cloud
as she walked away from the lab. She heard Cloud chuckling at her. Oh and he
thought this was a joke! He never laughs—unless he thinks it’s really amusing.
Because the school was big, it took Leafiá about a minute to get to her
office although they were on the same floor. She usually knocked since she shared
the office with Jay, but she just wasn’t in her mood.
She heard Fang behind the door. Oh, Jay, Luka coming, Luka coming! You
better hide that! If you have seen Luka’s face, you’d able to tell that she was
thinking ‘Oh, more secrets? Lovely!’
She just burst the door open, which wasn’t soooo like her.
Leafiá was dead surprise to all the packing wraps and red, blue, green
ribbons messed up in the office. It was weird to see 16-year-old blind teenager—
especially someone named Jay—on the floor, tangled up with yarns. Fang was
biting on the red yarns on Jay’s legs to get him free. There was a dead silence
while Luka’s eyes widened.
“Ummm,” she murmured. “Can anyone explain why my office is messed
up with yarns and paper wraps and ribbons?”
Jay muttered underneath his breath. “Oh crap, Shai will kill us.” He paused.
“Not that I am scared of her.” He added quickly. Oh my god, just because they—
Jay and Cloud—were related, that didn’t mean they had to copy each other! This
was freaky!
Oh, some people might think, eww, gross! Luka likes a guy who’s related
to her! But actually you’re wrong. Yes, Jay is Leafiá’s second-cousin-once-
removed, but remember? Jay is half-human, half-cat, and half-rabbit. Yes, Jay and
Cloud were half-siblings, which meant they had different mother. And to being
with, Luka wasn’t supposed to like anyone. She was a Medicine Doctor.
Fang added, I can bite her even before she gets her sword out. Gosh, cats!
“Now tell me what’s going on, PLEASE!” she said with annoyed voice.
Jay shifted uncomfortably. “Um, you know it’s your own birthday?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, really? I never figured that out.”
Jay sighed, “Well, you see, Shai was thinking about surprise party.”
Oh great. Was he allowed to tell her about the surprise party? He bet he
wasn’t—it was a surprise party. But Jay could tell Luka was upset. She was the
type who took her burden by herself and didn’t tell anyone—anyone including
Cloud and her relatives like Shai and himself.
Luka’s eyes widened. “Surprise party? I never heard of that nonsense
before. Cloud only cares about Fern’s bi—” she paused. Ah, that was what she
was worrying about. Fern, Cloud’s cousin and ‘maybe’ love. Fern and Cloud were
so close. Everyone knew Cloud only wasn’t grumpy to Fern and Luka. Everyone

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thought Leafiá would be jealous of Fern, but there was one reason Luka couldn’t
bet mad at her—they were best friends.
“Fern’s birthday. Right. I totally forgot about her birthday, oops.” He said
with annoyance in his voice, hopefully it would make her feel better. It wasn’t like
he got along well with his second-cousin-once-removed; actually, he was mad at
her right now. She knew that he had different mother than Cloud, and she never
told him about it until he guessed it. From that day, he never was warm to her.
Buy it was her birthday today, right? She deserved it.
“For God’s sake, Jay, stop lying,” a female’s voice came from behind
Leafiá. A voice that was similar to hers. Shai was standing there with (always
grumpy) Cloud. They were both hold two presents each.
Cloud snorted. “I thought the surprise party was supposed to be for Fern
and Luka. Oh oops, it’s not secret anymore, is it?”
While there was a cold present between the two half-brothers, Shai hugged
her sister. “I’m sorry, Leaf. I didn’t mean to make you suffer. Aww, and I thought
I was doing this for your benefit!”
Luka wiped a drop of tear coming out from her eyes. No one ever
celebrated her birthdays except Shai. Her parents were cruel, they always liked
Shai best. Now, there were tons of people, more than one person, who were glad
that Luka was born in this world, at this time. She didn’t think a time like this
never would come.
Jay and Cloud flashed their rare smiles. Shai let her go, and stuffed her with
the presents. “Happy birthday, Leafiá,” they murmured softly like wind brushing
through the leaves.